Stefano Farkas' salmon flies
Italian Stefano Farkas ties some beautiful - and very large - full dressed salmon flies.
I received an email from Italy with a couple of pictures of some beautiful full dressed salmon flies. It came from Stefano Farkas. Stefano had been a frequent GFF visitor for many years and commented on many articles.
He had inquired about the Traherne poster, which I had made together with Danish fly tyer Kim Rasmussen many years ago, and reacted by sending me pictures of two Traherne flies that he had tied – the Nepentian and the Phoebus.
I approached him about doing an article with a picture gallery of his flies, and he indulged me and mailed me a handful of images, which you can now see on this page.
Stefano ties many of his flies on really large hooks. Several of the flies you see here are tied on 10/0 hooks, which are very large, even in the world of large salmon fly hooks. The hook size gives Stefano some issues when it comes to materials. Many of the feathers used for these flies are already quite exotic and quite rare, and getting them - or substitutes - for hooks in the 10/0 range is nearly impossible.
The hooks that Stefano uses are often the Harrison&Bartleet, hand made by R.W.Reynold.
The story of the Golden Lady
Of all my flies, this has a special value: I tied it in 2003 and there is a strange story to it. It like a Traherne Golden Butterfly or Tippettywitchet, but it is not. I had never seen these patterns before tying it. I only wanted to make a fly using not only the upper part of the hook, as usual, but also the lower part. Later, after getting the Kelson book, I have seen how close it his recipe is to to mine. Strange.
Anyhow, Traherne was first!
Please note the complexity of the tying: each couple of tippets have its own topping, and doing a fly of this size (10/0) requires a lot of extraordinarily long toppings, which are very difficult to find.
A May 2017 addition
A short explanation: I called it Green Highlander variant # 1 ( there will be a #2 but next will be probably a Jock Scott variant).
The hook is for the first time a Ronn Lucas Sr. Harrison&Bartleet 10/0 which I just received from him. If you will show my fly, please underline the hook maker: I think hook is an essential part of the dressing and of the final composition and it is not easy to find them of such a quality.
I received from Ronn also a 14/0 H&B: you cannot imagin how huge it is! Sooner or later I will do something with it and show to you.
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